


The Art Game

by Vilakins



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Drama, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vilakins/pseuds/Vilakins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sal loved art from an early age, but he had to learn to play another game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madamedarque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamedarque/gifts).



> A Yuletide treat.

Sal Romano loved drawing from his very first stick figure, and even then, it was a real one with a proper body and the arms and legs in the right place. He couldn't understand why the other kids drew arms coming out of the sides of the heads, and legs out of the chins. People didn't look like that. And they didn't even understand when he told them so.

At school he drew all the time. He doodled all over his exercise book covers. He got crayons and drew on the newspapers from the day before (he learned to check the date after a few explosive and physical reactions from his father). He even drew in the air at Mass, creating an imaginary drawing in mid-air of the priests and choirboys in their robes, even rubbing out the wrong bits with a quick wipe of his hand. At least until his mother, upset by the people who thought her son was nuts in the head, whacked him hard on the arm every time he started a drawing.

***

  
It wasn't until he was at high school that people really noticed though. He did well at art, and his best work (a rolling landscapes he'd only seen in his imagination with purple hills in the distance, two fashion models wearing Sal's own designs, some bright Gauguin flowers, a streamlined red car) were displayed on the walls. This marked Sal as a sissy, a Nancy-boy, and he might have been picked on but for two things: the fact that he'd inherited his father's build, and his realisation that the drawing of the car didn't seem to count as sissy. He ended up making a name for himself, drawing tanks and jeeps and soldiers, fighter planes in dogfights, dive-bombing Stukas. Boys lined up for them. They gave him commissions.

"You got the bombs wrong," Tony said, leaning over Sal's desk. "They're all falling crooked."

"No," Sal said patiently. "See, by the time that bomb has fallen a little way, the plane has moved on, and the next bomb falls a little ahead."

Tony looked blank.

"Look, when they land on the ground, they'll be in a line, see? So that proves they fall like that."

Tony nodded, satisfied. "Yeah. Okay. So can I have a tank next?"

It was the lapses that sometimes got him into trouble, like when Buck found one of the drawings at the back of his exercise book.

"Hey, look, guys. Sally-girl drew a ballerina!"

Sal stood up slowly and cracked his knuckles, a trick he'd learned from his father, who usually did it before laying into one of them at home. "Yeah. You got a problem with that?" He leaned forward so that his nose almost touched Buck's. "I drew it for my sister," he said slowly.

He hadn't, but he did do drawings for Teresa. She'd started, like most kids, with the head and attached limbs, but she'd graduated to princesses. Princesses had a set style used by all her friends: a round face with a big curl of hair either side, a triangular torso, a series of overlapping triangles for the dress, and two lines for the arms held behind the back, presumably to avoid the pitfalls of drawing hands.

"I'll do you a proper princess, Terry," Sal said, and drew a girl with blonde hair swept across her face and curling softly on her shoulders, her full-length layered dress swinging as she turned and held out a hand to dance, her face teasingly averted.

Delighted, Teresa took it to show their parents, whose response was underwhelming.

"That's nice, dear," their mother said, giving it a brief look before turning back to the eggplant parmagian' she was making.

"What the hell's that?" their father growled, putting down his beer. "What _are_ ya? I thought I had a son, dammit."

"You do. I _am_ on the football team," Sal said mildly.

"Just as well. Next thing I know, you'll want to be a hairdresser."

"Hell, no." Well, he didn't.

Teresa pinned the drawing on her wall, which got Sal a lot of orders from her friends. He liked doing them--princesses, prancing ponies, pretty brides--as long as his father never caught sight of them. Luckily, Teresa and her friends weren't at high school yet, so he was safe. He was big and strong, he was on the football team, and everyone thought he liked girls because he often looked at them with open appreciation. No one noticed that his fingers made tiny movements against his thighs as he traced their profiles, their legs, or the folds of their clothes in miniature. And if he drew lots of boys, well, that was all right, because it was sport. No one looked askance at the bulky football players, the baseball players caught in mid-pitch or bat, their bodies twisted in their tight clothing.

No one except for a couple of the guys, who could somehow see what Sal tried so successfully to hide. And for that matter, he could see what they were too, and always turned down their offers of a night at the movies, or a visit to their houses. You had to be careful, after all. Just one mistake could screw everything up. Shit, life wouldn't be worth living at home.

***

  
Art school was of course out of the question, even if there'd been money for it. Artists ranked with hairdressers, symphony musicians, and clothes designers in their lack of masculinity according to Sal's father. So Sal made up a portfolio and took it round the various agencies.

"Advertising?" His father examined the idea for hints of sissiness. "Whaddaya want with that when I can get you a good construction job?"

"More money in it. Here, have a look at my portfolio. Go on, just a look." Sal held it out. It was an version edited for paternal perusal, with strong-jawed cowboys gazing into the distance as they smoked, men shaving their chiselled faces, a wide selection of large or fast vehicles, and women with enormous breasts barely contained by their skimpy tops as they leaned forward seductively.

"Not bad." Sal's father raised his eyebrows in approval. "Advertising, huh? I guess that's okay. It's a man's game, advertising."

Sal nodded and smiled. And he was going to go on playing that game.


End file.
